Painting
by Vampy Sparda
Summary: A single moment can be captured forever, when love is the camera that takes the picture. [Oneshot]


She could almost picture it.

That grand instrument, standing alone in a field of white. Unreasonable, of course. It was just the imagery that took her breath away. Little dots of soft white, lazily falling around the stark black lacquer of the piano. The sweet smell of pine wafting through the air from trees piled high with the snow. Blue mountains in the distance, peaked with white. Lights could be seen dotted along its sides. A city alive with people.

And of course, the music. The sweet, beautiful notes. Crescendos, staccatos. Classical, definitely. It was familiar to her ears, but she couldn't place the name, or composer. Mozart? Beethoven, maybe? Any other music that she had heard as many times as she had heard Mozart would have become overplayed. But Mother... she had loved Mozart. Her whole childhood, she had fallen asleep to the sounds of Mozart's violins and cellos. Full symphonies. Beautiful every time.

She could never possibly get tired of it.

Every note swept along dark, marbled floors. Huge paintings covering the walls like classical wallpapers, assorted in their scenes and colors. Statues and sculptures pressed up against dark stone walls, beautiful nude women and Romanesque poised men. A single window cut into the room, long midnight blue curtains trailing in a winter breeze. The room was cold, except for a huge stone fireplace set in the middle of one wall. A tall, bright fire burned there, warming the room despite the chilly breeze.

And he. A man of cold, chiseled of ice. He was made for this room, and it seemed to her that maybe she was living inside of a painting. Did true life look this beautiful? Did other people… did artists see life like this? It was as if her eyes were truly open for the first time. She would have laughed earlier if someone had suggested such a thing to her, but maybe this is what couples always spoke of. Maybe love did make life more beautiful. She watched him intently; he didn't seem to mind, or even notice it. His cold eyes were fixed upon the paper in front of him, the edges of the pages ruffling with the wind quietly.

Strong fingers flew across the keys of the grand piano as if in a complicated dance. His body swayed slightly with the music, with the tone and the way the notes fluttered. It would have looked silly on him at any other time. But at that moment, she was enraptured. A few centuries of life, she supposed, and you picked up a few skills. Piano playing had not come to her mind at first.

He was dressed in a dark suit, the color contrasting starkly with his snow-white hair. Pushed back from his forehead, as always, though a few idle strands still hung in front of his strong face. As beautiful as the statues, she thought, or even more so. A living statue among a graveyard.

She shivered slightly as a breeze hit her sitting form on top of the piano, blowing her black dress around her ankles. Snow landed softly on the silk, dotting the dress with frost. Her hair – she had grown it out longer, basing her decision on an idle comment he had made one day – blew from her face, and she reached up to brush away the snow out of her hair and her eyelashes. Her hand stopped as her mind was caught in the tendrils of the wisps of snow, blowing in their own soft lamenting dance through the air, caught between the cold wintry chill from outside and the warm fire inside. The music he played – seemingly unaffected by the cold, but of course, he was of the cold himself – seemed to lead the flakes around, floating around her form, landing on every spot of flesh they could find.

The wind knocked on the glass roughly as the music reached its climax, his fingers moving even faster, leading the snow to its untimely death in the heat of the room, somehow so warm despite the cold and the breeze.

And then it stopped, and all was quiet. Even the fire didn't seem to make a noise as the man stood up, approaching her, his beautiful lady. His warm hand, quite contrary to his nature, cupped her soft face that had become frightfully cold. He neared her, nuzzling into her neck, his strong arms wrapping around her tiny form, entrapping her in heat and passion and the epitome of lust.

Her bi-colored eyes looked into his hard blue ones, and then the closed in the instant he pulled her into him, bringing his lips to meet hers. And the snow melted from her closed eyes, from the eyelashes where they had rested. The water fell down her cheek as if she had been crying, and maybe she had. It had been just a perfect moment, a beautiful one.

And that's why years later he was alone at the building of art, his eyes caught on a particular painting that covered an entire wall. It shamed all the paintings around it, as if it were a king on a throne. He seemed alone in the world, but all the patrons had stopped there at that painting, looking at the sweet emotion in it.

He smiled, eyes shining. Many long moments flew by, and then he finally walked away.

The other witnesses to the picture didn't see. They were enraptured by the picture of a beautiful strong man kissing a crying young girl on a piano, a breeze of music and snowflakes wrapping them in a grip of love.

Pictures were taken from every angle, the patrons wanting every detail of the picture. Even then they hadn't noticed that the young man in the long, blue coat had been the young man in the dark suit. The one who had played the piano for his beloved lady one cold winter's night, when love had been the only thing to warm him.


End file.
